Cool reading

So there I was, skipping around the interwebs, and I came across this in The Atlantic: “Nearly 100 Fantastic Pieces of Journalism.” That is, a list of nearly a hundred articles The Atlantic listed as TEH AWESOME in journalism. You’ll find the link to the list at the end of the blog. In the meantime…

The articles are grouped by topics. For example, the first topic is “The Art of Storytelling” and in that you’ll find articles like Mariah Blake’s “Dirty Medicine,” from the Washington Monthly, which profiles the dysfunctional health and medical industry and how health care reform hasn’t changed a thing. Another is Malcolm Gladwell’s “Pandora’s Briefcase,” which appeared in The New Yorker. It’s a story about one of the most successful acts of espionage in WWII.

Or, if that’s not your thing, try something in the Crime and Punishment section, like Sean Gardiner’s “A Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison,” in The Wall Street Journal, which details how a high school dropout educated himself in a law library, confronted witnesses who testified against him, and proved the corruption of the prosecutor who wrongfully convicted him. Or how about “The Ballad of Colton Harris-Moore,” by Bob Friel in Outside Magazine, which traces the actions of a teen fugitive in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington, and how he made a mockery of law enforcement.

Perhaps something from Science, Religion, and Human Nature? Like Forrest Wilder’s “He Who Casts the First Stone,” about a militant Christian group in Amarillo, Texas that targets people and businesses with campaigns of constant harassment. You can find that in the Texas Observer. Or a story from The Atlantic about the first person diagnosed with autism, and what his long, happy life could tell us. That’s “Autism’s First Child,” by John Donvan and Karen Zucker.